


Eighteen-plus

by BettlerWerdenFuerstenbrueder



Series: ZMcZ Prompt Ultramarathon [5]
Category: El Goonish Shive
Genre: Gay Bar, Non-Linear Narrative, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 14:20:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11292420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BettlerWerdenFuerstenbrueder/pseuds/BettlerWerdenFuerstenbrueder
Summary: It's eighteen-plus night at Club Alibi, and two girls from Moperville...





	Eighteen-plus

**Author's Note:**

> When I read this prompt, I was sure it was going to be OT3, but once I actually got here, I just really wanted to use that Uranus tag...

The subwoofers shattered Tedd's ears as she leant on the railing.  Below her, young boys and girls were dancing, forming little crystals of their own kind.  Above were suspended two cages inhabited by go-go dancers, one male, one female.  A drag artist, boobs bigger than either Tedd's or Grace's, stood on an elevated stage over an eighties-looking tape deck Tedd was sure was for show.  Through the patio doors behind her, Tedd could smell the throng of guests determined to send their lungs the way of their ears and livers.

It was eighteen-plus night at "Club Alibi," so named (in part) because it was situated in the loft of a police annex, about halfway between Moperville and T--.  Earlier that week, in male form, she had been convinced to go by Grace.

"What if someone recognizes me?" Tedd had asked.

"No one will!" Grace had replied.  "Even if they do, if they're there they won't care."

"But what if it gets back to the school?"

"So what?  We'll only be in school a few more months, and you only actually talk to four people, and they all know already!"

Tedd bit his lip.  "And my dad?"

Grace paused.  "I've already told him we might be going, and he knows you.  He'll know.  If he hears it from someone else, well, he still knows.  If he's worried about people knowing about your magic, in your girly base form, it shouldn't be a problem; remember the card tournament?  Now imagine if half the people there'd been in drag."

At the time, Tedd nodded, but it hadn't stopped her heart trying to escape her chest when the bouncer's eyes settled on the M on her vertical ID.  It didn't help that, despite being well into her fifties, she was built like a 5'4" tank, a layer of fat hiding muscles that poked out whenever she turned a certain way, the effect of which was that the weight age had brought her somehow only added to her presence.  Tedd reached out for Grace's hand, and she took hers.

At last, the bouncer said simply, "rough, kid," and handed Tedd's ID back to her, then marked her hand to identify her as under 21.  Grace presented her own ID, which Verres had provided for just this occasion, in his eyes a cold look Tedd couldn't forget as he'd handed it to her.  The bouncer marked her as well and took their twenty bucks.

The vestibule opened onto a tiny corridor, facing an opening to a cozy little bar inundated with old men.  There were a handful of women and youths, but no one with marker.  Although nowhere was there an obvious indication under-21s weren't allowed, Tedd felt a quiet forbidding aura emanating from the entrance.  She and Grace took a left, toward the wider part of the club.

Before them as they stepped out was a dance floor, surrounded by numerous tables and couches, as well as the then-empty stage and cages, an unstaffed bar with no chairs and more novelty liqueurs than the other, and the low balcony that led to the patio.  No one out there was old, but at this point, the music relatively muted, groups of close friends gathered at tables, sipping cocktails and mocktails.  Tedd would become increasingly nostalgic for this scene as the night went on.

Also as the night went on, Tedd would become increasingly self-conscious about how the black mark on her hand clashed with the pink-white pattern of her dress.  If she'd had pockets, she'd have tucked it there, but of course, she was a girl now, and not just a girl, a fancy girl.  Of course, the other girls in the bar weren't dressed like this; they mainly wore trousers, with a smattering of far more casual skirts, half of the former and nearly all of the latter with cute tops, half with more plain ones.  There were a few with dresses, but none as pretentious as hers.

Sarah and Ellen had all but dragged her to the boutique; Ellen had wanted to take her to the mall, convinced that no one would recognize her in female form, but she and Sarah had vetoed that idea, despite the added expense.  Having a perhaps romanticized view of the club, she'd gone with a fancy pink and white pattern, strapless, showing plenty of cleavage.  Sarah and Ellen had dragged Grace in the next day, with Tedd in full regalia, and found her a green dress that complemented both her own dark skin and Tedd's light skin and dress.

Around ten, the unstaffed bar had come to be pulchritudinously staffed as a line grew down the stairs.  The speaker mounted in the bar by the vestibule crept up, and the men there crept out, (alleged) twenty-somethings taking their place, whiskey and wine giving way to Tito's and Pabst.  The drag artist whose name Tedd couldn't remember had taken the stage, as the go-go dancers had entered their cages.

Behind her, Tedd felt Grace's hand on her upper arm, her breath against her face, her body against her own.  She turned, and the look they exchanged said without words what they were thinking.  Hand in hand, they made for the exit, where the last of the clubgoers were arriving.

The two walked down the stairs into the dusty, dark alley.  All there was to guard the two small girls was the bouncer now bored at the door, the presence of a police annex, the fact that one of them could render most men into hamburger the moment she convinced herself to do so, and that the other could have him spend the rest of his life in the sex he might have victimized.  That is to say, nothing at all.

The throbbing of the subwoofers came down from the club into the alleyway, the underlying "music" absorbed by the club's walls.  It made a lovely time signature, to which they might imagine something resembling actual music.  Grace pulled Tedd to her, and began to lead her in the motions, she must have Googled, of a waltz.

Bierce's polemic against the waltz reads: "to lookers-on it is 'suggestive' enough, Heaven knows, but to the dancers, it is an actual realization of a certain physical ecstasy which no pure person should experience save under the sanction of matrimony."  To the two lovers dancing in that alley, this approbation of a conservative maniac rang true.  As the children grinded on the dance floor, as the old men who'd flirted earlier in the night went home in pairs or more, in that alley, Grace and Tedd, fully clothed and softly touching, made love.


End file.
